Armies of Chinese-made fluorescent tubes blaze the sterile isles with cool light, the sort of light that makes its subjects flawless, the sort of light that makes us spend. My brown pupils pulse back and forth in order to adjust to this sudden clean inferno. The undefined spots and blobs of yellow, red and blue morph, assemble and reassemble into shapes and borders. The goo of which reality is made of and which at my point of evolutionary blindness could have taken the shape of anything, becomes food- shelves and isles and food.

The rubber wheels of the trolley I had just released virginly roll along the reflective floor. My palms hold on to the trolley's handle as if it was a natural extension of my hands and my veins as if fasten onto it and branch out like weeds of life. My ebbing fingertips frivolously shroud the supermarket's name that was printed on it thanks to a statistic. There exists only a lone sign of imperfection in this great achievement of modern men that was built on the ruins of our souls, the last letter of the supermarket's name has been partially rubbed out. The crest of the king and queen that this palace was built in the glory of is only salvaged by the different shade that exists in the void the letter left after its demise. My brain can decipher this code of accident because life taught my brain to develop a dependency on it- a name recited, reread and replanted deep in the depths of living- TESCO'S.

My feet drive me and my trolley past the stands of stapled glossy paper and the commercial distribution of ideas, these magazines scream of colour and my eyes scan the general only to settle on the particular. I see a professional photograph of an attractive scantily-clad supermodel who is making a career out of her flaws and troubled childhood. It doesn't take long for her to die out of my vision and be buried away from my mind. I pass the collection of cheap clothes made in sweatshops by overworked third-world children who are undernourished and underloved. They would marvel at this pinnacle of choice they helped to create, a pinnacle we take as our birthright.

The rest of the shop unfolds and rolls before me like a red carpet before a star, both inviting and noble. First, the hard plastic baskets of the grocery section, the sealed homes of frozen ready meals, the eternity promised by the canned and dried goods section, the cold but not frozen collection of prepared food, the brightness of the dairy section and the darkness of the alcoholic drinks section take over my senses and perception. I am too a part of this system. I am unexplainably attracted towards the two-for-the-price-of-one Spanish oranges, grown not in beautiful countrysides but underneath the burning heat of greenhouses so that they could be offered 1p cheaper than the competitors. Mother used to buy her oranges from a daily market and they were always vivid and fresh, so vivid in fact that every orange since seems blemished and flawed. Uncle Harry used to make comments, that now seem more like innuendos, at mother's ranges. He used to come when father was away at work and engage in a game of flirt with my mother which I was too young to understand but not too young to forget. I am surprised how my father never noticed anything, how his brother behaved around mother, how she blushed when he made bawdy jokes and how every weekend there was a fresh set of Dutch phallic flowers from the florist round the corner, Gay Joe as we used to call him. We had no proof regarding Joe's sexual orientation but his jolly behaviour, his floral colourful shirts and his smell were suspicious. He had the smell of a Cox apple at the stage when small colonies begin to erect their foundation in the apple's flesh, digging tunnels into its core.

I select five of the best looking oranges, shallowly displaying society's values by expecting their taste to match their appearance. The thought that there might be an ugly duckling, an ill looking orange with an exceptional taste, passes through the grey cells in my head but is quickly dismissed.The oranges now lie at the left corner of the trolley, protected by their carefully controlled environment. I let them be and a green tube mysteriously finds its way into my hand. It contains a crushed mixture of herbs that promises to add a mildly spicy life to any dry casserole, soup or salad. I put it back on its shelf, wondering how many people have done the same. My trolley soon collects more and more lodgers; a depressed and lonely Iceberg lettuce, a herd of beautifully crafted closed-cup mushrooms and a box of cherry tomatoes that are more well travelled than I am. I once read in a Sunday newspaper the history of the tomato and how it failed to gain popularity due to its resemblance to a deadly hallucinogenic fruit, the Atropus belladonna. The name is derived from the Latin "belladonna" due to the habit of medieval women to apply the fruit to their eyes to achieve the then-trendy dilated pupils look. Stories of ancient stupidity usually make us laugh with an air of pride and superiority but I personally don't see much difference between the dilated pupils of deadly-tomato-chic and the protruding bones of heroin-chic. It is an eternal truth that we shall never stop at anything in order to look and feel more beautiful.

My body is burning food and my bloodstream is revitalised with energy that translates to a forward stretching of my arm muscles and a roll of the trolley's rubber wheels, this bodily effort allows me to continue the vicious circle of living by buying more food. "Where is the freedom of choice that Western society champions?" I wonder and find myself surrounded by a herd of frozen boxes slabbed with pictures that hardly resemble the actual product that is quietly poisoned by additives and chemicals underneath. I pick up two chicken curry ready-meals and the pictures are promising: golden yellow rice resides in an ocean of spice, surrounded by a thick and creamy sauce whose texture depicts the terrain of India more accurately than any map can; steam rises over the dish and caresses the tender and moist perfectly-cut pieces of chicken that live in beauteous harmony with pitted tomatoes, chopped garlic and sliced peppers; a silver fork stretches into the heart of a chicken cube that is slightly more in focus than the rest of the picture. A newly pressed red and white sticker with a particularly plastic smell shouts "two for five pounds". The two boxes find companions in my vegetables at the bottom of the chrome plated trolley.